


Where are you, Christmas

by InMyArmsAgain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Fluff, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Holidays, Meet-Cute, Modern Westeros, Older Man/Younger Woman, Real World References, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:56:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21680737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InMyArmsAgain/pseuds/InMyArmsAgain
Summary: "For as long as she had been able to think for herself, Daenerys Targaryen hated Christmas."The holidays have always been the worst time of year for Daenerys, and this year was no exception. After moving away from King's Landing, all she asked for was to be left alone to celebrate as she saw fit. But this year, a chance meeting just might be the thing that could possibly change that.Could this be the Christmas present she always needed, but didn't know she wanted?
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	Where are you, Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I don't think I have ever been so determined to get a story up and running. This is what happens when you go see "Last Christmas," and then can't get Jorleesi holiday fluff out of your head. But girl, don't you have that overdue chapter for "The One Exception" to finish? Or the other two dormant fics that need finishing? Well, I have no answers except an excess of my own Christmas spirit combined with my absolute favorite ship to date.
> 
> I first started this story before I saw the postings about the "a song of frosted bear kisses and dragon roasted chestnuts" Christmas collection, and I certainly don't mean to intrude on anyone or any story. I just hope that in this case, more is merrier.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. The worlds, characters, and names in ASOIAF/GOT all belong to George R.R. Martin and HBO.

For as long as she had been able to think for herself, Daenerys Targaryen hated Christmas.

It wasn’t that she was an unhappy person. She wasn’t forward about her holiday abhorrence like some cartoonish Scrooge figure, nor did she try to rob others of their enjoyment. Most of the time, she was actually well composed and content, which she was rather proud of, given what a holy terror she could be at her worst. But every year, when December creeped in like some black storm cloud, something just as dark seemed to invade Dany’s soul and settle there in her chest.

Every year, she dreaded the weeks-long countdown that turned everyone around her into a demented horror monster that lived off the manufactured cheer of the season. She loathed the feeling of being the only sane person in a madhouse, and she despised how the world itself tried to tell her and everyone else that nothing else mattered.

It was strange, though. She didn’t have such intense feelings for any other holiday. Halloween had always been a fun, twisted outlet for her creativity. She and her friends always loved dressing up, right on through to adulthood. She had even learned to sew costumes for the elaborate parties they attended. New Year’s was always a blast, always ending stupidly, delightfully shit-faced after toasting away the days they wished to forget. And of course, that wasn’t even counting the number of birthdays marked on her calendar, hers or her loved ones.

But Dany just couldn’t muster up the same enjoyment for Christmas. Sure, she still purchased gifts for her closest friends. She attended the little get-together at the Stark’s home, and the holiday dinner arranged for her office. She even had a certain practice she took care of on Christmas Eve. But that was because it felt required of her to keep everyone else happy. Anything more than that was like torture.

The decorations were gaudy, and they seemed to appear earlier and earlier every year. The songs were annoying to the point of making her grind her teeth every time she switched on the radio. The amount of advertising, overmarketing, and over all commercialization made it feel like for all the love a person felt for another, no single gift would ever be enough. And though Dany’s opinion of people was optimistic at best, everyone around her just seemed to have an air of phoniness for the length of the entire month.

God, she hated all of it!

As much as she wished for this stupid, overblown holiday to cease to exist, she wished even more that others would stop trying to get her to change her mind. She knew her friends cared about her; they had been the ones to see her through her hardest days. Missy and Grey were always her steadiest companions, following wherever she went. And then Jon…Jon was her family, her only family. She might not have known him for as long as she would have liked, having met only a few short years ago in University. But once they did connect, he made up for that lost time. He gave her the love that she could not find in anyone else, and he had brought her into his own family in the Starks. Yes, she loved them all, and she knew they loved her too. But why couldn’t they listen to her when she said that she wanted to spend her Christmas alone? Why couldn’t they just leave her be and go enjoy themselves, without the self-imposed burden of including her and forcing her to make merry when she would rather bury herself in a heap of blankets and pillows and not come out until the new year?

Why must they force her to try to find joy where she had long ago left behind.

88888

When Jon had suggested to Dany that she move from King’s Landing up north to Winterfell, she had done so with the expectation of quiet. And for the most part, that was what she got. Compared to the loud, crowded streets of the capitol, with too many vehicles and far too many people, Winterfell was practically a farming village. The buildings were old and quaint, the streets were still cobbled all through town, and nature was allowed to creep back in amongst the houses. Dany had never seen so many trees before she came up here. But what Dany had not expected when she moved into her little flat above the local bookshop was that she had unknowingly moved right into the middle of god damned Whoville!

The morning of December first, as she stepped out to start her morning run, Dany was greeted with the sight of tiny Christmas trees outside every shop door, tinsel garlands wrapped around every lamppost, and colorful, twinkling fairy lights what were plugged in way too early in the morning. In the distance, like some higher power determined to make her go mad, she could faintly hear the speakers in the town square playing “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas.” Where the hell had all of this come from so suddenly?! Had all this been done overnight?!

No, that was impossible. Perhaps all these decorations had been up for days and she had been willfully ignorant to them. Either way, Dany had to look to the heavens with an exasperated silent whimper as she locked the door behind her, stuffed her keys into the pocket of her light blue fleece jacket, and inserted her earbuds, picking up where she left off yesterday in her new favorite podcast on dragon lore and legend.

“Good morning, Miss Targaryen!” greeted Gilly, the wife of the bookshop’s proprietor, Sam Tarly. Dany didn’t know either of them very well, but Sam was a longtime friend of Jon’s, and it was him who had passed on the word of the empty apartment over their shop. They seemed nice enough though. Gilly offered her a tender smile, her chunky knitted sweater doing little to shield the baby boy she carried in a sling across her chest, and she gently swayed her child as she hung a festive wreath on their door. Dany suppressed the urge to cringe as she returned the greeting and carried on her way.

As she jogged down the street, braced against the cold northern air, Dany noticed that she had to dodge a lot more people on the sidewalk than she usually had to. True, it was Saturday morning, and she had left a little later than she would during the week, but this was unusual even for that. Winterfell was a big place, but certainly not a metropolis. On closer inspection, Dany realized that many of the people she passed were traveling in groups, laden with shopping bags, and chattering and laughing like they were having fun. Had she not been focused on keeping her breathing even, Dany might have thrown her hands up to shield her eyes from this huge amount of absurdity for so early in the day.

Twenty-four days...they had twenty-four days, plenty of time to get their holiday shopping done! But no, because the shops had to all open with huge sales at the first appropriate moment, and that meant there was no better time to get a good start. Why, just think of the money that could be saved! Never mind the poor people who just wanted to go about their morning in peace. Dany didn’t get to go out jogging as often as she would have liked, limited to the weekends by her early start time at her job, thus pushing her into the gym every other afternoon. So whenever she did get the chance to actually get some fresh air and sunlight (however little there might have been; the northern skies in winter were always some shade of grey), she wanted to fucking enjoy it, even with the cold slicing across her face and the icy burn in her lungs that grew more the further into town she ran.

She started to slow down as she rounded the corner that took her to the town square. By now, the cold was really starting to get to her. She had lived in the south for virtually her entire life until a couple of years ago, and she doubted that she would ever get used to proper winter. Though she had bundled herself up in her fleece, as well as her insulated leggings, and her golden scarf and gloves, the frigid air eventually penetrated everything to chill her to her bones. She would need to seek warm shelter soon to give her body a short break before heading home again, she thought as she waited for the traffic light to change at the corner where King’s Road met Main Street. Once the walk signal blinked on, she trotted across to start down the town’s central road.

It was a very quaint place compared to King’s Landing. Instead of the big-name department stores, most shops here were locally owned with a charming array of names and fares. The restaurants were too, mostly, though there were a few chain names she recognized from the south. And like any old town, one could get anywhere they needed to be from the open square surrounding the statue of Bran the Builder and his great direwolf, and the elegant gazebo named for Good Queen Alysanne. One way would take you to the schools, another would lead to the church, and yet another had the bank, post office, and other staples that seemed as steady and old as the town itself. Closer to Dany though, just up the way and off King’s Road lay the old family home of the Starks. It was one of the first places Jon and Sansa had taken her on her first visit two years before, and Dany remembered how it was one of the first things she loved about Winterfell.

Today however was another story. All of Winterfell was out this morning to mark the start of the holiday season. Signs were outside every shop advertising their sales. The church’s children’s choir were by the gazebo singing a selection of the cheeriest, cheesiest carols. And near them was some man dressed like Father Christmas, ringing a bell for charitable donations. Dany just tried to ignore all of it, pretend that nothing was any different than last week.

“Daenerys!” a high, clear voice called out. Dany skidded to a stop, turning around like it was an emergency, only to feel her stomach turn when she saw Margaery Tyrell approaching, shopping bags hanging from each elbow, and wearing a smile so white, it wasn’t humanly possible. “Fancy meeting you here this early. How are you, dear?”

“No worse than yesterday, Marge,” replied Dany, working up her own polite smile to mask her mild irritation. She and Margaery worked together in the same office for Golden Lion Publishers, with Margaery as the well-paid marketing coordinator while Dany slaved away at a desk as an administrative assistant and sometimes proof-reader. While Dany could say that the classy woman from Highgarden was nice enough, she acted like that for everyone, so Dany felt there was absolutely nothing genuine about it. And she had to be the most high-maintenance woman Dany had ever met in her life. It was apparent in the mink fur coat she wore, with matching hat, and makeup that was way too perfect for ten o’clock in the morning on a Saturday.

“Have you come to start Christmas shopping?” asked Margaery. “This is your first holiday up North, isn’t it? Well, take from me, it is simply delightful. The most adorable décor I’ve ever seen! Just wait until you see the tree lighting outside of the town hall next week. Oh, it just gets you right into the spirit of the seas-”

“No, I’m just out on my run,” Dany shook her head, trying hard not to cringe and not caring about interrupting her coworker. “I didn’t think there would be so many people out this early.”

“Oh sweetheart, you have no idea! The first day of December is always busy in Winterfell. All the shops are at least forty percent discounted on nearly everything they sell. Apparently, it’s this big tradition they’ve had going for years. And you know what they say about early birds, right? I’m meant to be scouting out a venue for the office Christmas party, but I saw that Hightower’s had a buy one, get one deal on dresses. Of course, how could I resist that? One thing just leads to another, I suppose. What Tyrion doesn’t know won’t hurt anyone. And my Granny just loves her scarves. I doubt they have any like these back home.”

The older, prettier woman just prattled on, explaining how easy it was to complete her list of gifts for family while also impulse shopping for herself. It must be nice to have funds like that, Dany thought to herself. To come from a rich family which can buy the right connections that lead to a high-paying career. As harmless as she was, Margaery was completely detached from the average person’s situation. People like Dany, who didn’t have an infinite bank account, and could only afford gifts for her closest friends, much less splurge on herself.

“Yes, well,” she cut in, again interrupting Margaery’s trail of thoughts. “I’m sure you’ll look nice in what you’ve bought today. I suppose I’ll see at work on Monday.”

“Oh, of course,” Margaery said with a flirty grin. She glanced down at her watch. “I’m sorry, I really must be going. I’m sorry if I’ve kept you.”

Dany shook her head. “Nothing wrong with real fresh air for a while longer.”

“I will see you at work then, Daenerys,” said Margaery, and she turned to walk back the opposite way. “You get inside now, before you turn to ice!”

Dany had learned over the past seven months of working with her that when Ms. Tyrell told you to do something, you did it, no questions asked. Adjusting her plain, woolen scarf about her neck, the chilled southern girl carried on down the street, pulling her arms in close to her body to avoid bumping into people. She had a destination in mind, the same one every time she went jogging. She sighed with relief when she came up on the Crossroad’s Café.

But her heart just sank when she opened the door to smack straight into the back of a long queue. A mass of voices melded together into an oppressive hum, with the baristas behind the counter shouting over them to get customers’ attention. The most offensive sound was the screeching of small children sitting in the prams and strollers that totally congested the walkways, completely fed up with their mums sitting and chatting over a latte. Dany liked this café mostly because it was quiet, a place where she could sit and collect her thoughts for a while. She would like to meet one living person who could accomplish that in these conditions.

Dany was just about to turn and leave to make her way back home when out of the clear blue, someone loudly called out her name. She looked back to notice the mousy lad behind the counter waving her over. Quickly glancing over to make sure that no one would notice and accuse her of cutting line, she snuck over to the side of the counter.

“Hello Podrick,” she practically gasped, allowing herself to momentarily relax the tension in her shoulders.

“Good morning, Miss Targaryen,” said the young man, who looked about as calm as a rabbit in an open field. Dany’s brow scrunched up as she said, “Please Podrick, I’ve told you, call me Daenerys.”

Podrick’s cheeks turned pick at the request. “Sorry, it’s just force of habit. Been the only thing keeping me going today.”

“Has it been this busy all morning?”

“Just about. The holidays are always our busiest time of year. We get people coming in from other counties for the festivities, and they all want their hot coffee. I’m sad to say that you wouldn’t be the first regular to turn ‘round and go home.”

“Damn it! Just can’t escape it!” Dany gripped her hand into a fist as she held it up to her face and shook. “I left King’s Landing to get away from this shit. I can’t even grab a cup of coffee without being assaulted by this bloody nonsense. No holiday is worth this, not one bit!”

“You’re starting to sound like my old man,” said Podrick. “Look, if you don’t mind waiting, I can whip something up for you when the queue goes down. Your usual, right?”

Dany thought about it for a moment, and she decided that she would rather keep to her own plans and her own pleasures than give in to her frustration. If she didn’t manage that now, then she might as well move again to the most isolated corner of the world. Saint Nick and merry-makers be damned, she was going to get her coffee!

“Frankly Podrick, I would wait as long as it takes. If you can make a drink for me, I would kiss you and then nominate you for sainthood.” Podrick’s flushed deeper into a full red, and he gave a bashful smile. “Oh, no trouble, really,” he said. “Go on and have a seat. I’ll get it to you as quick as I can.”

Dany thanked him one more time, and she swiftly dashed past the other waiting customers. She looked around the room, searching for an empty table, but she quickly found that the same groups that were taking up space outside had found their way inside. When she finally spied a free seat by the far side window, she made a break for it. She was only a few steps away when she noticed the open book laying on the table, and she almost stopped completely. The table was already taken.

Dany looked around again. She didn’t fancy the idea of sharing with a stranger, but she also didn’t wish to stand leaning against the wall, looking pathetic with her little foam cup. Besides, Missy had told her that she needed to be braver and actually get out and meet new people instead of relying on her, Grey, Jon, or Sansa. She took in a deep breath and she marched up to the table with tight lips.

“Excuse me,” she began, following the rehearsed lines she cooked up in her mind. “I’m sorry, but there are no other tables. Do you mind if –,”

She looked up at the man sitting leaned over that open book, and suddenly, she was stunned silent by a pair of penetrating blue eyes that stole away any false composure she thought she had.

**Author's Note:**

> I ended this first chapter a lot sooner than I first planned, mostly just in anticipation of getting this story up and going. I promise that I will go back and fix each and every error before I post again.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this, and kudos and comments are much appreciated!


End file.
